Quotes About Language

We were language's magpies by nature, stealing whatever sounded bright and shiny.

Having been borne across the world, we are translated men. It is normally supposed that something always gets lost in translation; I cling, obstinately, to the notion that something can also be gained.

Only the foolish, blinded by language's conventions, think of fire as red or gold. Fire is blue at its melancholy rim, green in its envious heart. It may burn white, or even, in its greatest rages, black.

Khattam-Shud,' he said slowly, 'is the Arch-Enemy of all Stories, even of language itself. He is the Prince of Silence and the Foe of Speech. And because everything ends, because dreams end, stories end, life ends, at the finish of everything we use his name. It's finished, we tell one another, it's over. Khattam-Shud: The End.

Language upon a silvered tongue affords enchantment enough.

A figure of speech is a shifty thing; it can be twisted or it can be straight.

that witchcraft requires no potions, familiar spirits, or magic wands. Language upon a silver tongue affords enchantment enough.

He had picked up languages the way most sailors pick up diseases; languages were his gonorrhoea, his syphilis, his scurvy, his ague, his plague.

You'll say things all wrong but they'll at once become American ways of saying things. You won't know shit but it'll right away become an American type of ignorance. Not belonging, that's an old American tradition, see?, that's the American way.

Khattam-Shud,' he Said slowly 'is the arch-enemy of all stories, even of language itself. He is the prince of silence and the foe of speech. And because everything ends, because dreams ens, stories end, life ends, at the finish of everything we use his name. 'It is finished,' we tell one another, 'it's over, Khattam-Shud; the end.

It did not occur to any of them that their decision was born of a colossal sense of entitlement, this notion that they could just step away from yesterday and start tomorrow as if it wasn't a part of the same week, to move beyond memory and roots and language and race into the land of the self-made self, which is another way of saying, America.

Perhaps we, who are language animals, possess a song and story instinct; we need and move toward stories and songs not because we are taught to do so but because it is in our nature to need them.

You observe … that when it's time to unleash a few insults, a man will always choose his mother tongue.

The alphabet is where all our secrets begin.

Names, once they are in common use, quickly become mere sounds, their etymology being buried, like so many of the earth's marvels, beneath the dust of habit.

Bir toplumun kilidini açmak istiyorsan?z, tercüme edilemeyen kelimelerine bak?n.

the new Filipino President's name had become a saucy joke: 'Corazon, aqui, no?' That is: 'Darling, let's do it here, eh?' Or, if the words were stressed differently: 'Corazon, aqui? — No!'

Witchcraft requires no potions, familiar spirits, or magic wands. Language upon a silvered tongue affords enchantment enough.

since the past exists only in one's memories and the words which strive vainly to encapsulate them, it is possible to create past events simply by saying they occurred.

Khattam-Shud' he said slowly, 'is the Arch-Enemy of all Stories, even of Language itself. He is the Prince of Silence and the Foe of Speech. And because everything ends, because dreams end, stories end, life ends, at the finish of everything we use his name. "It's finished," we tell one another, "it's over. Khattam-Shud: The End.

But it was Genesis that got him, the Vulgate that was his namesake Saint Jerome's work. Genesis, especially chapter one, verse three. Dixitque Deus: fiat lux. Et facta est lux. Translated by himself into his personal Bombay "Wulgate": And God said, Cheap Italian motor car, beauty soap of the film star. And there was Lux. Please, Daddy, why did God want a small Fiat and a bar of soap, and also please, why did he get the soap only? Why couldn't he make the car?

many of us, as immigrants—or our parents or our grandparents—had chosen to leave our pasts behind just as the Goldens were now choosing, encouraging our children to speak English, not the old language from the old country: to speak, dress, act, be American.

Ngôn ng? là sá»± can ??m: chúng ta hình thành nó t? trong ý nghÄ©, nói nó ra và làm Ä'úng nhÆ° v?y ?? bi?n nó thành sá»± th?t.

I spoke no Spanish, so I was unable to haggle with the taxi-drivers. 'Benengeli,' I said, and the first cabbie shook his head and walked away, spitting copiously. The second named a number that had no meaning for me. I had come to a place where I did not know the names of things or the motives for men's deeds. The universe was absurd. I could not say 'dog', or 'where?', or 'I am a man'. Besides, my head was thick, like a soup.